Sports Science Association.
Kerry contacted Martinez and immediately booked two one-hour sessions per week, on Mondays and Wednesdays. Right from the start, he proved to be a challenge and was full of complaints.
“He was awfully picky about the temperature in the gym,” Martinez says. “It was either too warm and stuffy, or too cold. I constantly had to open the door or adjust the thermostat.”
Then there was the hour of his appointment, which seemed to always be inconvenient. “He didn’t want to stay in his spot,” Martinez remembers. “He’d show up late, and say, ‘Well, I need a later spot.’ I’d try to schedule him later, and then he’d say, ‘I want an early spot now.’”
Martinez got to talking with another client, one who knew Kerry personally. This client told Martinez that Kerry had a reputation for chiseling construction contractors on engineering jobs. He’d haggle over their invoices and never pay in full.
But this didn’t add up for Martinez. Kerry kept his family’s account current at the health club. The fifty-something business executive also seemed dedicated during his workouts. He wanted to build muscle, lose weight, and increase his flexibility, since Kerry was, as Martinez assessed, “stiff as a board.”
“The workouts weren’t bad,” Martinez recalls. “I could really hammer him. He had a lot of pride and didn’t want to look weak. He wanted to be pushed. Push-ups, sit-ups, bench press, squats, lots of stretches. Every once in a while we’d talk about his business, the engineering projects and stuff like that. But he was not a man of a whole lot of words. He came in, did is thing, complained, and left.”
Then, one day after six months of twice-a-week workouts, Kerry was a no-show. Martinez stood around waiting at the appointed hour.
There had been no advance phone call from Kerry to cancel or reschedule, nor was there a follow-up call explaining why he’d missed. Martinez called Kerry’s cell phone, but only got the voicemail. Martinez left a message, but did not hear back.
At the next scheduled workout session, Kerry was absent again.
Martinez spent another hour waiting in vain—an hour he could have filled with a different client. Martinez felt like he was in limbo. Should he scratch Kerry’s name from the tight schedule and book another client in that time slot? Surely, Kerry would make good on the missed appointments, Martinez thought. After all, Kerry was an important business man, one who valued the training and understood what it meant to make appointments.
The following week brought two more missed sessions. Martinez saw Kerry’s teenaged daughter working out at the club.
“I asked her what had happened to her father,” Martinez says. “She said he was out of the country on a trip to the Far East.”
Martinez left another voice message for Kerry, this time saying that the club would be charging him for the missed appointments.
Martinez turned in the usual slip at the club desk so that the family’s account would be billed.
It was Kerry’s wife who responded to the voice message.
Evidently, she’d reviewed her husband’s missed calls in preparation for his return. She was not pleased that they had been billed for the no-shows. She called up the club and demanded that her husband not be charged for the missed sessions. The clerk left a message for Martinez to call her.
“I’m not paying for this bill,” she told Martinez over the phone, in a superior, snobbish tone.
Martinez protested: “He didn’t tell me he’d be gone, and I was there. You’re paying me for my time.”
Kerry’s wife did not raise her voice. But she did not change her position, either. “I’m not going to pay for the time,” she said, smugly.
Martinez was flustered. It’s standard practice for personal trainers—and for professionals in other fields that set appointments with clients, such as dance instructors, massage therapists and hairdressers—to bill clients who fail to give a minimum 24-hour notice of a cancellation.
“I fill my hours,” Martinez says, “and if somebody flakes and has already bought my time, that’s how it works.”
Martinez explained this to Kerry’s wife, but it was to no avail. Her mind was set. Martinez was not paid for the no-shows.
The long-term listening strategy involves hearing and evaluating what the client says throughout the term of the relationship. In the case of the personal trainer, Jeff Kerry was constantly complaining about everything, including the hour of his appointment. A client who constantly wants to shift his time to fit his ever-shifting schedule is ignorant of the fact that personal trainers need to assign people to fairly fixed schedules in order to maximize their earning potential. The client who is unwilling to stand in the shoes of the provider and appreciate their business position is the client who must be told the rules early on.
When the trainer, Matthew Martinez, kept hearing about schedule changes, he needed to interpret and evaluate what was being said.
Essentially, Jeff Kerry’s actions revealed that he did not care about Martinez’s business model. If Martinez had given Kerry’s words a proper evaluation, he would have developed a written policy about missed appointments. If Martinez had addressed the issue early on, in anticipation of the inevitable problem, he would have had a client who called ahead to cancel, out of consideration for his time, or who would at least have paid him for the missed appointments. Instead, he had a client who took advantage of his time and valued it even less.
Case No. 2: The CPA
Victor Lee was a CPA in Seattle. He had a good practice handling the bookkeeping and tax work for a number of businesses and individuals.
One day, John Yang came into the office looking for a new CPA. He indicated that his last CPA had improperly filed a tax return, which had caused him problems with the IRS. As the initial client consultation went on, Yang also complained about two other previous accounting professionals he had used. He said that they didn’t know what they were doing.
Lee liked to bring in new clients to the firm. As some of his elderly clients passed on, he always felt the need to attract new accounts so his billings would be equal to or higher than those of the previous year. He listened to Yang’s explanation of his background without focusing on the caustic comments expressing dissatisfaction with all his previous accountants.
Lee agreed to take on Yang’s work. He filed an amended tax return for Yang, sent out a bill, and did not hear from or receive payments from Yang.
Three years later, Yang called Lee in a panic. The IRS had put a lien on his bank account. Yang was furious that Lee had allowed this to happen. Initially, Lee drew a blank. He hadn’t heard from Yang for a few years and couldn’t recall the file. He asked if he could call Yang back, and that’s when Yang made another disparaging comment about accountants.
Now he remembered Yang.
If Victor Lee had listened carefully to John Yang, he would have heard the signs of a Toxic Client. He would have heard that John Yang has financial trouble—why else would he repeatedly have problems with the IRS? He would have heard John Yang say all his previous CPAs didn’t know what they were doing – a sure sign of future trouble for you.
Listening is a key
